Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

Those who can’t watch… do.

While re-reading the last post, I realized that I have now become one of those people who plays in a way that I am uncomfortable watching.

Let me be more specific.

I am extremely uncomfortable watching scenes where the bottom seems to honestly want the top to stop doing whatever they are doing, but I sometimes find it extraordinarily hot to bottom (or more accurately submit) to a scene where I am honestly begging my partner to stop.

Thus, a question of ethics:

Is it responsible for me to publicly participate in a scene that, as an observer, I would want to stop*?

I am frequently acutely aware of this problem as I am playing. I generally actively try to make it clear to my partner that, even as I am honestly asking them to stop doing what they are doing,  I am okay with them continuing. I tend to be even more conscious of this if there is an audience to our play that may, for one reason or another, have difficulty leaving (i.e. if I am playing in a large room at a party instead of off in a quiet corner.) I become concerned about causing dismay.

It is an awkward thing, playing in public in a way that I know would bother me to see. Part of it is also that, as a professional sex educator, I am extremely conscious of wanting to set a good example with how I play. It may be a little ridiculous, but if I’m going to do something that I wouldn’t necessarily want other people to emulate, I try to do it in private.

–

_{*Note: I do not try and stop these scenes when I see them. I just walk out of the room. I may, occaisionally, check in with the bottom afterward to make certain they are okay if they are a friend of mine… or with a friend of theirs to see if that is how they normally play, but mostly I just leave. I have trouble watching people suffering if I am not able to tell they are enjoying it. Particularly people I care about… even if I know they’re masochists. I tend to want to drag the top off of my friend and beat THEM. I am a violent soul, just not particularly a sadist.}

Not so long ago, my main dominant partner told me to do something that, had you asked me in advance, I would have said was:

1. a hard limit
2. massively squicky
3. not hot in the least

In the moment, however, I did it without question, because he said to, and it blew my mind.

I feel like I should find this problematic, but I don’t. Even though the act in question is still rather squicky in retrospect, I’m not actually bothered by the fact that I did it. In fact, I find it rather insanely hot that, in the moment, I just did what he told me too, and I’m reasonably certain that had it been something that was going to bother me upon sober reflection I wouldn’t have… but I’m only reasonably certain.

This, then, is where my intellectual and emotional responses to submission take a divergent course.

• There is a voice inside my head that  keeps telling me that I should be disturbed by the fact that I not only can give up enough of my control to someone else that I will do things I find instinctively objectionable without even thinking about them  but that I enjoy doing so.
• There is a separate, and much louder, voice that is thrilled to have found a situation in which, and a person to whom,  it feels so safe to thoroughly give up the control that I normally grasp so tightly in my tension filled hands.

Time out of mind is one of the things I most value about submission. It is not something I find easily, and once I get past the difficulty of letting go of thought, giving up control, freeing myself from the usually overpowering constants of analysis and worry, it can be exhilarating, quiet, peaceful, erotic, terrifying, comforting…. or all of the above. To unquestionably do this thing was, in some ways, a proof to me of how much I had given - how much I had let go. That was a good portion of the reason why I found it so hot.

With the partner in question, I’ve noticed that I  tend to say “yes” these days  before the question is even asked, and it is sincere. This largely feels safe because I honestly do not expect him to ask anything I’m truly unwilling to give. Realistically speaking, however, that instinctive and preemptive “yes” actually worries me more than the acting without thinking, because I know that there is every possibility that he could ask for something I am not willing to agree to… and I would hate to renege on my word.

I suppose that’s where I have to, and do, trust in the balance - that he knows me well enough to not try and take me places to which I can not in good conscience travel, and that if he does I will be able to say “no.” This is a trust that has to go both ways, because if I did not choose these things willingly; if I came out of an activity feeling I had been coerced; if I did not like them so very, very much; or if I was unwilling or unable to stop a scene that was going badly wrong, I could, as he is so fond of joking, press charges. The risk for him is low as long as I can, and do, say “no” when I need to, but some of the pleasure for, I believe, both of us, is in the expectation of acquiescence. The alternative would be giving up the simple joy I take in giving him the ability to take me, and I like the feeling that he has blanket permission (within the boundaries of previously expressed limits) to take anything he wants… even though I know intellectually that it isn’t true.

That idea of blanket permission  is a fantasy that I get to live in by giving more than is easy and more than is comfortable and sometimes by giving more than the things I would choose. I think it would be naive to believe that it is a fantasy in which my partner can fully share, since even though our desires in these areas are quite well aligned I know he must have to moderate the things he asks for and the things he takes… if by nothing else than in their timing.

I often think that it must be a very frightening thing to be an ethical dominant sadist, to enjoy controlling and hurting people while worrying about doing physical or emotional harm. To, in particular, enjoy controlling and hurting people who you care about, who you don’t want to damage or drive away. To sometimes actively choose to do what you want regardless of whether or not it’s something your partner would choose for themselves or even like*. To constantly have to worry about consent.

It’s easier, I think, from the bottom - where I can take a perverse sort of pleasure in choosing not to safeword and letting him beat me until I bleed…  even as I am sincerely begging him to stop.  Where I can be constantly surprised by how much I enjoy it when he doesn’t… because it is a visceral reminder that much of how I find pleasure in submission is in giving someone else what they want rather than in getting to live out a particular fantasy, experience, or dream.

–
_{*And even writing that, I doubt that my feelings on these matters are ever not a consideration. They may not be the driving one, but I suspect they are usually at least subconsciously weighed - thus the ethical part of the formulation.}

–

EDIT: Because it came up in a discussion of this post on another site, I should say that the !squick  in question had NEVER been discussed as a limit.  In the middle of a scene is not when you renegotiate boundaries, and if that had been what was going on I would have been livid.

I am a highly suggestible person.

This, in most circumstances, is extraordinarily aggravating. I yawn when I hear someone yawn on the other end of the phone. Anytime someone mentions having to go to the bathroom, I suddenly have to go too. It’s a little ridiculous.

Still, in the context of sex and submission, I have discovered that suggestibility isn’t a bad thing at all. It means, among other things, that I am highly susceptible to conditioning… even when the conditioning isn’t intentional.

We have reached the point where when my main dominant partner touches my face in a certain way I become instantly turned on.  I don’t even know how or when it happened, but lately when his hand comes to my cheek I am suddenly wet and ready without even a thought.  I like it.

I also seem to have gotten past my orgasm issue. It turns out that what you can accidentally train yourself out of you can also accidentally train yourself back into - particularly if you have inspiring help. Why having to ask, or beg, for orgasms makes it easier to have them is inexplicable to me, but I will not look this gift horse in the mouth.

I really like the intense comfort of this submission. It’s odd to think of something that’s so often frightening or painful as comforting, but it is. It’s one relationship where I usually feel pretty confident of where I stand and what I should do and that’s lovely. It makes it easy to keep saying yes. Even when it scares me…. possibly especially when it scares me.